According to the United Nations’ Pan
American Health Organization, a total of 200,000 people drove under the
influence of alcohol on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights in Mexico City,
in 2008 alone.

As to simple proficiency among Mexican
drivers, the testing (or lack thereof) may provide the rather frightening
answer.

In six Mexican states as well as in Mexico
City, issuing agencies do not administer any sort of test before handing out
driver’s licenses. In these locations, one need only pay a fee to obtain a
license (about $45 in Mexico City).

Three other states require the applicant to
sit through a class, after which all attendees are issued licenses, while many
other states give tests consisting of rather easy multiple choice questions.

And what happens when a driver is pulled
over in Mexico, say, for speeding?

The Mexican travel website
travelyucatan.com gives the following advice:

“Speeding is, as a rule, easily taken care of
by offering to pay the fine on the spot. If you cannot pay on the spot, one of
three things will occur:

• The officer will
accept less money.

• The officer will
accompany you to an ATM while waiting around the corner.

• The officer will
take your driver’s license and you’ll receive a ticket. You will need to pay
the fine to retrieve your driver’s license.

Sometimes the officer will simply let you
off with a warning if you have a good attitude.

You will NOT be arrested.”

What is the result of such lax policies?

In October 2011,
The
Economist announced that 24,000 fatalities occur on Mexico’s roads
annually, while another 600,000 people are injured.

According to the World Health Organization,
pedestrians account for 21 percent of Mexico’s road fatalities.

Such was the case in June 2008, when
Mackenzie Maddox, 6, was hit and killed while crossing the street in a suburb
of Milwaukee. The man behind the wheel was previously deported Mexican national
Jose Rodriguez.

As little
Mackenzie and her mother crossed the street at S. 84th St. and W. Cleveland
Ave. in West Allis, Wisconsin, the car driven by Rodriguez came speeding
through the intersection, striking both the little girl and her mother Andrea.
Mackenzie died at the scene and her mother sustained serious injuries but
survived.

Rodriguez, who
had four prior driving convictions including a DUI, had been deported back to
Mexico only four months prior to the fatal accident.

The lack of
standardized testing, the absence of drunk-driving laws, and corruption all add
up to make Mexico’s roads, perhaps the most dangerous in the world. Of course,
as Mexican nationals make their way to the U.S., it is safe to assume that they
bring their country’s driving experience to this country.

What follows are
a few of the more egregious examples of how an unprotected border with Mexico
has turned our roads into a no-man’s zone:

In
February 2008, four children were killed in Cottonwood, Minnesota,
after their bus was hit by an illegal alien who ran a stop sign.

On
a gloomy Tuesday morning, Mexican national Alianiss Nunez Morales went sailing
past a stop sign on County Road 24, and right into a school bus carrying 28
Lakeview School students.

The
bus flipped over on its side, injuring several children and killing four.

The
children who were killed in the crash were: Emilee Olson, 9; Hunter Javens, 9;
Jesse Javens, 13; and Reed Stevens, 12.

Four
other children were hospitalized at Avera McKennan Hospital & University
Health Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Another child was transported to
the Mayo Clinic.

Morales
was arrested and charged with four counts of vehicular homicide as well as
several misdemeanors. Apparently, she was not even licensed to drive in Mexico.

Of course, that was not
Morales’ first brush with the law. In 2006 she pleaded guilty in a Chippewa
County court to driving without a license.

Morales told
police that she was on her way to work when she caused the fatal wreck. Despite
her illegal status, she was employed by Norcraft Cabinetry in Eagan, Minnesota.

The company’s website (norcraftcompanies.com)
displays a section entitled “Code of Business Ethics and Conduct.” Within that
section, the following statement is made: “All employees must respect and obey
the laws of the cities, states, and countries in which we operate.”

That statement
seems more than a bit hypocritical coming from a company which hires illegal
aliens!

‘I’ll never forget her laugh’

On March 30,
2007, in Virginia Beach, Virginia, Allison Kuhnhardt, 17, and Tessa Tranchant,
16, while waiting at a red light, were killed by Alfredo Ramos, 22, who was
drunk and traveling at a high rate of speed.

The Mexican national
had nearly a .24 blood-alcohol level and could barely see the police officers
in front of him. The two high school students had to be cut from their crumpled
car, and both later died after being taken to the hospital. Ramos suffered only
a busted lip.

Ramos had been
living in Virginia Beach for quite a while and worked at a local Mexican
restaurant known as Mi Casita. Ramos had been previously convicted of three
separate charges of public intoxication, identity theft, and even a DUI, but
continued to live in the area. He speaks only Spanish and required an
interpreter at all of his court proceedings.

When he was
arrested, he was carrying a fake driver’s license and a Mexican ID card he
purchased from a company in Florida.

While Ramos had
already been convicted of a DUI, Virginia Beach policy dictated that an illegal
alien be convicted of three DUIs before police would report them to federal
immigration authorities. Virginia Beach police have since taken a more active
role in determining the citizenship of those they arrest.

Since that
needless tragedy, I have come to know Tessa’s parents, and am proud to call
both Ray and Collette Tranchant my friends. Never does a Mother’s or Father’s
Day pass that my my heart does not ache for those two. Their strength and grace
throughout the loss of their beautiful daughter is an inspiration to all who
know them.

In 2010, Ray,
who has since become an activist, contacted me with an open letter on his
daughter’s tragic death and the ongoing travesty that is our current immigration
system.

An excerpt from
that letter follows:

My 16-year-old daughter, Tessa, was killed by an
illegal immigrant in Virginia Beach
three years ago while sitting at a stop light. Her friend Ali Kunhardt, 17,
also perished instantly.

Beautiful
girls with tons of future plans, they had just stopped at a convenience store
for a pack of gum at 10 on a Friday night. I can imagine that they were
giggling about something as they waited for the red light to turn green. Tessa
was in the passenger seat. I’ll never forget her laugh.

The
explosion was so loud that witnesses said it sounded like a bomb going off, hit
from behind by a black Mitsubishi going more than 70 mph. They were tiny,
skinny little girls stuffed somewhere in the floorboards when the police and
EMT crew arrived.

When
I got to the hospital in what seemed like a dream sequence, Tessa’s bed was
lying next to Ali’s, separated by a privacy curtain. Both girls were perfectly
still, skin cold to the touch.

Tess was
covered with a hospital blanket, and her clothes lay in a bag by her bedside,
cut off by the EMT and the ER doctor who tried to revive her, to no avail. I
looked at her large brown eyes, pupils dilated, eyes wide open, staring at the
ceiling. She still had a mask taped to her mouth with a long rubber tube. The
center of the tube was filled with bright red blood. Amazingly, she had only a
little bruise on her forehead, and her big toe was bleeding. I noticed that she
had had a couple of her nails done with glitter, probably had just enough money
to do two. She worked at the Golden Corral; Ali worked at The Fresh Market.

I hadn’t seen Tessa in a
few days, and I had to laugh at her forearm. Hard to believe you can laugh with
such horror around you, but I did. She had previously told me that she suffered
from the ‘Tranchant curse’ — dark hair on her skinny little perfect arms — and
apparently she had shaved it all off (her way of getting even, I guess).

Alfredo Ramos, a previous
DUI offender and alcoholic, seemed invisible in a system that was good at
looking the other way. Virginia Beach and Chesapeake were being accused of the
term ‘sanctuary city’ as Bill O’Reilly and Geraldo Rivera screamed at each
other during the national news hour. O’Reilly was right. Yesterday, the
Director of Homeland Security said she would get to the bottom of why the
illegals are not deported when they are repeat offenders.

Ms. Napolitano, where was
ICE in 2007 when these girls died? I know what sanctuary means more than most
ever will.”

Unfortunately,
Tessa’s and Ali’s story is one which is becoming all too familiar in this
country.

The next time someone tries to tell you that illegal immigration is a
‘victimless crime,’ you can remind them of these two girls, whose lives were
ended before they really began.

In addition to
having no respect for our laws, a basic lack of respect for human life seems to
be a constant theme among many illegal aliens, those who hire them, and the
politicians who allow them to stay here.

In 2006, Rep.
Steve King (R-IA) released the findings of a study which determined that 4,745
Americans are killed annually by drunk-driving illegal aliens. Most consider
that to be a very conservative estimate. Currently, there are no official
government statistics on the number of fatal accidents caused by illegal
aliens.

How many more of
our children will have to be killed so that greedy businesses can reap a higher
profit through the use of cheap labor?

Until our current immigration laws become
strictly enforced…may the memories of these slain children haunt the dreams of
our spineless officials.

About the author

Dave Gibson, a former legislative aide to a Virginia state senator, is a freelance writer. His work has been published in many newspapers and magazines, including the
Washington Times.